From Sketches of History, Life, and Manners, in the West:
Volume IIBy James Hall

The "Indian-Hating" of Chapters 26 and 27, for many the most memorable and even important section
of The Confidence-Man, were derived greatly from Hall's Sketches (Philadelphia: 1835).
Elizabeth Foster first identified its use by Melville, and still it stands as the only certain source for his
novel.

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CHAPTER VI.

Indian hating.--Some of the sources of this animosity.--Brief Account of Col.
Moredock

The violent animosity which exists between the people of our frontier and
the Indians, has long been a subject of remark. In the early periods of the history of our country, it was
easily accounted for, on the ground of mutual aggression. The whites were continually encroaching upon
the aborigines, and the latter avenging their wrongs by violent and sudden hostilities. The philanthropist is
surprised, however, that such feelings should prevail now, when these atrocious wars have ceased, and
when no immediate cause of enmity remains; at least upon our side. Yet the fact is, that the dweller upon
the frontier continues to regard the Indian with a degree of terror and hatred, similar to that which he feels
towards the rattlesnake or panther, and which can neither be removed by argument, nor appeased by any
thing but the destruction of its object.

In order to understand the cause and the operation of these feelings, it is necessary to recollect
that the backwoodsmen are a peculiar race. We allude to the pioneers, who, keeping continually in the
advance of civilization, precede the denser population of our country in its progress westward, and live
always upon the frontier. They are the descendants of a people whose habits were identically the same as
their own. Their fathers were

SKETCHES OF THE WEST. 75

pioneers. A passion for hunting, and a love for sylvan sports, have induced them to recede
continually before the tide of emigration, and have kept them a separate people, whose habits, prejudices,
and modes of life have been transmitted from father to son with but little change. From generation to
generation they have lived in contact with the Indians. The ancestor met the red men in battle upon the
shores of the Atlantic, and his descendants have pursued the footsteps of the retreating tribes, from year to
year, throughout a whole century, and from the eastern limits of our great continent to the wide prairies of
the west.

America was settled in an age when certain rights, called those of discovery and
conquest, were universally acknowledged; and when the possession of a country was readily
conceded to the strongest. When more accurate notions of moral right began, with the spread of
knowledge, and the dissemination of religious truth, to prevail in public opinion, and regulate the public
acts of our government, the pioneers were but slightly affected by the wholesome contagion of such
opinions. Novel precepts in morals were not apt to reach men who mingled so little with society in its
more refined state, and who shunned the restraints, while they despised the luxuries of social life.

The pioneers, who thus dwelt ever upon the borders of the Indian hunting grounds, forming a barrier
between savage and civilized men, have received but few accessions to their numbers by emigration. The
great tide of emigration, as it rolls forward, beats upon them and rolls them onward, without either
swallowing them up in its mass, or mingling its elements with theirs.

76. SKETCHES OF THE WEST.

They accumulate by natural increase; a few of them return occasionally to the bosom of society, but the
great mass moves on.

It is not from a desire of conquest, or thirst of blood, or with any premeditated hostility against the
savage, that the pioneer continues to follow him from forest to forest, ever disputing with him the right to
the soil, and the privilege of hunting game. It is simply because he shuns a crowded population, delights to
rove uncontrolled in the woods, and does not believe that an Indian, or any other man has a right to
monopolize the hunting grounds, which he considers free to all. When the Indian disputes the propriety of
this invasion upon his ancient heritage, the white man feels himself injured, and stands, as the southern
folks say, upon his reserved rights.

The history of the borders of England and Scotland, and of all dwellers upon frontiers, who come often
into hostile collision, shows, that between such parties an intense hatred is created. It is
national antipathy, with the addition of private feud and personal injury. The warfare is carried on
by a few individuals, who become known to each other, and a few prominent actors on each side soon
become distinguished for their prowess or ferocity. When a state of public war ostensibly ceases, acts of
violence continue to be perpetrated from motives of mere mischief, or for pillage or revenge.

Our pioneers have, as we have said, been born and reared on the frontier, and have, from generation to
generation, by successive removals, remained in the same relative situation in respect to the Indians and to
our own government. Every child thus reared, learns to hate an Indian, because he always hears him
spoken of as an enemy. From the cradle, he listens continually to horrid tales of savage violence, and
becomes familiar with narratives of aboriginal cunning and ferocity. Every family can number some of its
members or relatives among the victims of a midnight massacre, or can tell of some acquaintance who has
suffered a dreadful death at the stake. Traditions of horses stolen, and cattle driven off, and cabins burned,
are numberless; are told with great minuteness, and listened to with intense interest. With persons thus
reared, hatred towards an Indian becomes a part of their nature, and revenge an instinctive principle. Nor
does the evil end here. Although the backwoodsmen, properly so called, retire before that tide of
emigration which forms the more stationary population, and eventually fills the country with inhabitants,
they usually remain for a time in contact with the first of those who, eventually, succeed them, and impress
their own sentiments upon the latter. In the formation of each of the western territories and states, the
backwoodsmen have, for a while, formed the majority of the population, and given the tone to public
opinion.

If we attempt to reason on this subject, we must reason with a due regard to facts, and to the known
principles of human nature. Is it to be wondered at, that a man should fear and detest an Indian, who has
been always accustomed to hear him described only as a midnight prowler, watching to murder the mother
as she bends over her helpless children, and tearing, with hellish malignity, the babe from the maternal
breast? Is it strange, that he whose mother has fallen under the

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savage tomahawk, or whose father has died a lingering death at the stake, surrounded by yelling fiends
in human shape, should indulge the passion of revenge towards the perpetrators of such atrocities? They
know the story only as it was told to them. They have only heard one side, and that with all the
exaggerations of fear, sorrow, indignation and resentment. They have heard it from the tongue of a father,
or from the lips of a mother, or a sister, accompanied with all the particularity which the tale could receive
from the vivid impressions of an eye-witness, and with all the eloquence of deeply awakened feeling. They
have heard it perhaps at a time when the war-whoop still sounded in the distance, when the rifle still was
kept in preparation, and the cabin door was carefully secured with each returning night.

Such are some of the feelings, and of the facts, which operate upon the inhabitants of our frontiers.
The impressions which we have described are handed down from generation to generation, and remain in
full force long after all danger from the savages has ceased, and all intercourse with them been
discontinued.

Besides that general antipathy which pervades the whole community under such circumstances, there
have been many instances of individuals who, in consequence of some personal wrong, have vowed eternal
hatred to the whole Indian race, and have devoted nearly all of their lives to the fulfilment of a vast scheme
of vengeance. A familiar instance is before us in the life of a gentleman, who was known to the writer of
this article, and whose history we have often heard repeated by those who were intimately conversant with
all the events.

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We allude to the late Colonel John Moredock, who was a member of the territorial legislature of
Illinois, a distinguished militia officer, and a men universally known and respected by the early settlers of
that region. We are surprised that the writer of a sketch of the early history of Illinois, which we published
some months ago, should have omitted the name of this gentleman, and some others, who were famed for
deeds of hardihood, while he has dwelt upon the actions of persons who were comparatively
insignificant.

John Moredock was the son of a woman who was married several times, and was as often widowed by
the tomahawk of the savage. Her husbands had been pioneers, and with them she had wandered from one
territory to another, living always on the frontier. She was at last left a widow, at Vincennes, with a large
family of children, and was induced to join a party about to remove to Illinois, to which region a few
American families had then recently removed. On the eastern side of Illinois there were no settlements of
whites; on the shore of the Mississippi a few spots were occupied by the French; and it was now that our
own backwoodsmen began to turn their eyes to this delightful country, and determined to settle in the
vicinity of the French villages. Mrs. Moredock and her friends embarked at Vincennes in boats, with the
intention of descending the Wabash and Ohio rivers, and ascending the Mississippi. They proceeded in
safety until they reached the Grand Tower on the Mississippi, where, owing to the difficulty of the
navigation for ascending boats, it became necessary for the boatmen to land, and drag their vessels round a
rocky point, which was swept by a violent

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current. Here a party of Indians, lying in wait, rushed upon them, and murdered the whole party. Mrs.
Moredock was among the victims, and all her children, except John, who was proceeding with
another party.

John Moredock was just entering upon the years of manhood, when he was thus left in a strange land,
the sole survivor of his race. He resolved upon executing vengeance, and immediately took measures to
discover the actual perpetrators of the massacre. It was ascertained that the outrage was committed by a
party of twenty or thirty Indians, belonging to different tribes, who had formed themselves into a lawless
predatory band. Moredock watched the motions of this band for more than a year, before an opportunity
suitable for his purpose occurred. At length he learned, that they were hunting on the Missouri side of the
river, nearly opposite to the recent settlements of the Americans. He raised a party of young men and
pursued them; but that time they escaped. Shortly after, he sought them at the head of another party, and
had the good fortune to discover them one evening, on an island, whither they had retired to encamp the
more securely for the night. Moredock and his friends, about equal in numbers to the Indians, waited until
the dead of night, and then landed upon the island, turning adrift their own canoes and those of the enemy,
and determined to sacrifice their own lives, or to exterminate the savage band. They were completely
successful. Three only of the Indians escaped, by throwing themselves into the river; the rest were slain,
while the whites lost not a man.

But Moredock was not satisfied while one of the murderers of his mother remained. He had learned to

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recognize the names and persons of the three that had escaped, and these he pursued with secret, but
untiring diligence, until they all fell by his own hand. Nor was he yet satisfied. He had now become a
hunter and a warrior. He was a square-built, muscular man, of remarkable strength and activity. In athletic
sports he had few equals; few men would willingly have encountered him in single combat. He was a man
of determined courage, and great coolness and steadiness of purpose. He was expert in the use of the rifle
and other weapons; and was complete master of those wonderful and numberless expedients by which the
woodsman subsists in the forest, pursues the footsteps of an enemy with unerring sagacity, or conceals
himself and his design from the discovery of a watchful foe. He had resolved never to spare an Indian, and
though he made no boast of this determination, and seldom avowed it, it became the ruling passion of his
life. He thought it praiseworthy to kill an Indian; and would roam through the forest silently and alone, for
days and weeks, with this single purpose. A solitary red man, who was so unfortunate as to meet him in
the woods, was sure to become his victim; if he encountered a party of the enemy, he would either secretly
pursue their footsteps until an opportunity for striking a blow occurred, or, if discovered, would elude them
by his superior skill. He died about four years ago, an old man, and it is supposed never in his life failed to
embrace an opportunity to kill a savage.

The reader must not infer, from this description, that Colonel Moredock was unsocial, ferocious, or by
nature cruel. On the contrary, he was a man of warm feelings,

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and excellent disposition. At home he was like other men, conducting a large farm with industry and
success, and gaining the good will of all his neighbours by his popular manners and benevolent
deportment. He was cheerful, convivial, and hospitable; and no man in the territory was more generally
known, or more universally respected. He was an officer in the ranging service during the war of 1813-14,
and acquitted himself with credit; and was afterwards elected to the command of the militia of his county,
at a time when such an office was honourable, because it imposed responsibility, and required the exertion
of military skill. Colonel Moredock was a member of the legislative council of the territory of Illinois, and
at the formation of the state government, was spoken of as a candidate for the office of governor, but
refused to permit his name to be used.

There are many cases to be found on the frontier, parallel to that just stated, in which individuals have
persevered through life, in the indulgence of a resentment founded either on a personal wrong suffered by
the party, or a hatred inherited through successive generations, and perhaps more frequently on a
combination of these causes. In a fiction, written by the author, and founded on some of these facts, he has
endeavoured to develop and illustrate this feeling through its various details.